Figure 1
Exhibition Le Corps-Monteur, Rémi Sagot-Duvauroux, Carrefour numérique, Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, June 2025.
Credit : © Béryl Libault.
1For the past fifteen years, the media form of television has been in full transformation (Sofio & Mille 2020), with its programmes and content now accessible in non-linear form and on various types of screens (Bourdaa 2009). Technological developments have led to new distribution windows and platforms (computers, smartphones, tablets, etc.), where the circulation of images plays a significant role and where practices of cultural consumption are transformed. Distributors thus are led to take advantage of increasing diversity in types and spaces of distribution (Kredens & Rio 2015).
- 1 This web documentary, which has long set the standard for the genre, was conceived on the basis of (...)
2Within this context, this article focuses more specifically on the development of “new media” audiovisual productions in France beginning in the early 2000s. This term encapsulates a range of formats that have undergone significant changes over time, but which have in common their reliance on these new platforms of distribution. The initial logic was to create complements to existing sports and entertainment television programmes. “Enrichment” experiences were created for such programmes: ways of inviting viewers to react to or prolong content through a second screen where they could, for example, rewatch a show’s highlights or engage with bonus material. Offering these experiences did not mean rethinking the fundamental conceptualization of programmes; the principle at work was instead one of superposition (Picard 2014). However, beginning in the second half of the 2000s, various documentary and fictional projects started to foreground forms of narration that both influenced content and changed understandings of production, playing on the duration or degree of interactivity of the works in question. Some of these projects remained linked to more classical television programmes, while others were hosted entirely on independent platforms. In 2005,1 the release of the web documentary La cité des mortes, which offered viewers an “active navigation” experience that included an interactive map, photos, a sound interface, a video module, and data sheets for its various characters, marked a true turning point. Media forms appeared to be entering an era of “convergence” that could respond to the “migratory behaviour” of audiences and their demand for immersive experiences and more collaborative formats that would allow them to take ownership of cultural goods by acting directly on the works themselves (Jenkins 2006).
3In the academic literature, these developments were initially studied through the lens of distribution and consumption (Curtin, Holt & Sanson 2014). Various works discuss, for example, the kinds of audience activation generated by these digital creations (Schmitt 2015). They also describe the experiences of viewers faced with new forms of audiovisual narratives (Chateauvert 2016) and investigate the effects of a supposed individualization of consumption practices within the context of deep reconfiguration of the relationships between audiences and television/media content (Jenner 2018; Lotz 2016). Such works have also shown that for young people, so-called “digital natives,” who “grew up with a joystick in their hands and an interactive screen in front of their eyes” (Scolari 2009), expanded use of mobile phones and the centrality of the Internet to leisure time are now incontrovertible (Bigot & Croutte 2010; Licoppe & Zouinar 2009).
4In this article, I adopt a different perspective, focusing instead on how productions and professions in the audiovisual sector are reshaped by the possibilities digital technologies represent. Drawing on data from a study conducted between 2010 and 2020 on producers involved in the creation of new media works, I examine the production arrangements, funding sources, and collaborations that make it possible to produce these works (Alexandre 2015; de Verdalle 2021; Mille 2024; Rot & de Verdalle 2013).
- 2 Translator’s note: the CNC is the agency of the French Ministry of Culture dedicated to supporting (...)
5Building on studies of transformations in the video game and media sectors resulting from technological developments (Benghozi et al. 2015; Benghozi & Chantepie 2022; Christin 2018; Simon 2022), I investigate the dynamics of a space of production within which various actors draw on new technological possibilities in order to rethink production content and modalities. In the case of new media, who are these actors? Is it newcomers, or rather established actors, who seize hold of what they perceive as new commercial and professional opportunities? What role do public agencies, and in particular the CNC [Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée; National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image2], play in the structuration of this space of production? Does this space remain heavily dependent on the “old” audiovisual world, or is it becoming independent? Answering these questions requires distancing oneself from the rhetoric of novelty associated with new media. Although from a technological point of view, new ways of creating works and stories have indeed been made possible, we must understand who is involved in this process, and to what degree this does or does not lead to the transformation of sector that, like cinema, has historically always been bound up with technological changes (Benghozi, Salvador & Simon 2019).
6First, I will review the main points of a study I carried out in two phases (2010–2012 and 2018–2020) among producers active in what the CNC today refers to as “digital creation” but which at the time was called “new media.” Following these actors over a 10-year period has made it possible to trace the development of the formats and mediums of these works, as well as to explore the variety of terms that have been used to designate them. I show the role the CNC and several other key actors played in these developments, through analysis of the labelling effects that helped trace the path of “new media production” in the French context. Next, I will discuss the heterogeneity of a professional space within which—in 2010 as in 2020—actors with different trajectories and experiences find themselves side by side. Here again, the long time span of the study made it possible to see the gradual structuration of a space of production whose autonomy from classical logics of audiovisual production must be investigated, in terms of the traits of the professionals involved, the projects created, and modes of financing. Finally, in the third section, I enter into the thick of collaborations and production content, and demonstrate the relative fragility of the digital creation sector’s organizational and economic models as well as its continuities with traditional logics of the audiovisual world.
7The empirical data used in this article was collected over a relatively long time span.
8It is thus useful to review how the study, which was conducted in two phases, progressed. Its time span made it possible to see the evolution of the positioning of the actors who contributed to shaping the digital media space of production, while shedding light on logics of labelling and institutional dynamics in this process.
- 3 In addition to La cité des mortes (2005), these included Thanatorama (2007), Gaza/Sderot (2008), an (...)
9In the early 2010s, I began studying producers in the television and movie sectors, focusing broadly on their professional trajectories and the roles they, along with directors, played in shaping and developing television and movie projects. Here we should recall that producers play a role in setting up projects, coordinating the necessary financing, and bringing together technical and artistic crews while overseeing and organizing the entire process of production (de Verdalle 2021). Over the course of these interviews, several of my interviewees mentioned the increasing visibility of projects referred to as “new media content.” The context for this was the recent release of various web documentaries that had received the attention of both critics and a segment of the public.3 Simultaneously, documentary film festivals began including web documentaries. Thus, I encountered several producers—particularly young ones new to the profession—who mentioned web documentaries or web series they were developing. Although such initiatives were rare in my corpus, they interested me, and at first I conceptualized them as ways for producers to break into production, akin to short films, which have long been a traditional route to accessing the movie world (Bregman 1997).
- 4 The SPI was founded in 1977 and is organized into various division (Short films, Feature films, Aud (...)
10Whether an adaptation of a TV series to smartphones, an interactive web documentary, or a “making-of” put out on the Internet to accompany the release of a feature film, the projects my interviewees described to me typically sought to join together content released on various screens, in more or less interactive formats, and geared toward “enriching” the audience’s experiences. These projects were as varied as the terms used to refer to them. Thus, early on in my study, the meeting reports of the “new media committee” of the Syndicat des producteurs indépendents (Syndicate of Independent Producers; SPI)4 I examined dwelled at length on matters of definition. Members of the committee proposed distinguishing between “Web native” productions, designed to be distributed exclusively on the Internet; “multi-platform” projects, where the same work is distributed in identical form on various platforms; “cross-media” projects (for example, online bonuses, along the lines of what one might find on a DVD); and finally, “transmedia” works that follow a logic of “content dissemination” (Picard 2014) and which involve the creation of intersecting narrations across different platforms (for example, a television series accompanied by a website dedicated to secondary plotlines).
11In the early 2010s, these definitions were far from stable, but the efforts of SPI members demonstrate actors’ need to bring order to a tangle of initiatives, and thereby to position themselves within a space that was still very fluid. Developing definitions and referring to already-existing projects were also ways of trying to influence an uncertain future by directly engaging in a logic of labelling.
12In late 2007, the establishment of a “new media fund” at the CNC began orienting this still very open future. By means of this financial lever, amounting to 3 million euros per year, the institution gradually began to exert control over the content and form of projects. The first call for projects it put out, in December 2007, offered a unique and relatively unrestricted writing assistance programme. Approximately 160 projects were submitted (for 24 laureates), demonstrating that there did indeed exist a supply of programmes with new media content. At the same time, the CNC’s action also created a magnet effect, encouraging producers and writers to enter into this space. After a year, the initial funding became permanent, across three programmes: a writing assistance and creation programme for multi-screen projects, and a development assistance programme targeting projects that combined new and traditional media (television or movies), whose television or movie components would be eligible for traditional funding. The existence of these first two forms of aid show that the CNC chose to bypass obligatory passage through traditional media, for the projects chosen could exist on their own.
- 5 However, degrees of interactivity were fairly varied among the productions selected: viewer partici (...)
13This system was refined over the following years and the eligibility criteria evolved rapidly. In 2007, the multi-platform dimension was emphasized, without any content requirements being imposed. Early awards went to several cross-media projects created by private channels, which were later ruled out on the grounds that such works were marketing projects rather than creative works. This, for example was the case with “making-of” videos, which were too overtly marketing, or certain web documentaries that appeared to be ways of showcasing programmes shown on television. The definition that the committee constructed and solidified (stories that present a point of view; the use of non-linear narrative structures; and graphics that enrich the story), highlighted the requirement of innovation in form and in writing that would become the norm for later selections.5
- 6 Translator’s note: France Télévisions is the French national public broadcaster.
- 7 Notably, France Télévisions moved towards projects that used writing and formats inspired by video (...)
- 8 This web documentaries shows the lives of residents of Sderot, in Israel, and of Gazans, living thr (...)
14Of course, the CNC was not the only institutional actor to invest in the new media space. Its efforts at labelling were taken up and bolstered by France Télévisions,6 which in 2011 created a “New Writing and Transmedia” department, before launching IRL and Studio 4, platforms dedicated to new formats and web series.7 The Franco-German channel Arte was even more heavily involved: after having supported the first web documentaries—notably, Gaza/Sderot8 (2008)—in 2011 it created the Arte Creative platform, whose projects frequently received assistance from the CNC. Thus, a homogeneous and coherent space of production gradually took shape, within which there was a consensus that new media productions included a creative dimension and had a certain degree of autonomy from traditional television programmes. This space eventually included about fifteen production companies who regularly benefitted from CNC assistance.
- 9 At the time, Émilie Sauguet was conducting doctoral research on the sale and marketing of documenta (...)
15It was in this context that between 2010 and 2012, I, along with Émilie Sauguet, who at the time was a doctoral student at the University of Paris Nanterre,9 conducted a first series of interviews. We met with producers developing new media content whom we had identified at our respective fieldwork sites, and we raised the question of how this new content might or might not be changing their working conditions, or perhaps even shaping new career modalities.
- 10 In some instances, we interviewed two individuals from the same production company. In total, these (...)
16Either together or separately, we interviewed twenty-five individuals10—nine women and sixteen men. Their profiles, described in detail in the following section, were varied (from young newcomers to seasoned producers to Web professionals). We explored the hypothesis of a broader movement reshaping of professional logics and production chains in the movie and audiovisual sectors by inquiring into the characteristics of the projects developed and the conditions of their making.
- 11 The report includes testimony from producers at 27 companies active in the sector. Among the 20 com (...)
17However, it very quickly became apparent that a certain amount of temporal distance was necessary to analyze the structuration of the sector. To what degree were these projects reshaping power relations within the audiovisual sector, or diversifying—or perhaps homogenizing—the profiles of producers and of production practices? Thus, at the end of this first round of interviews, I undertook, alone this time, an observation and collection study of documentary materials. I was able to draw on the report entitled Les nouveaux producteurs: la french touch de la webcréation [The new producers: the “French touch” in Web creation], produced in 2014 by Fablabchannel and commissioned by the Institut français.11 This observation study led to eleven further interviews, carried out between 2018 and 2020, eight with individuals I had already met with around 2010, as well as three newcomers. The goal was to understand how the activities and projects of producers already active in 2010 had evolved, and to inquire into the new conditions for accessing a sector that had, in the meantime, strengthened its internal structuration, in particular through the creation of a professional association, PXN, in 2016.
- 12 Translator’s note: the “independent bookseller” label (Label LiR) was launched in 2007 for promotin (...)
18Finally, the study included the CNC. Over the course of ten years, we followed successive reorganizations of the assistance programmes for new media projects, and carried out two rounds of interviews in 2011 and 2018 with the department responsible for them. The name changes this department underwent (it became the “Department of Digital Creation” in 2018) is a further indication of the evolution of the sector and of how the CNC envisioned it: through the lens of experimentation and what were seen as its most creative elements. As in the case of arthouse cinema or the “independent bookseller” label,12 albeit in a less formalized manner, the CNC’s actions aimed less to guide consumers choices and more to position businesses within a professional and productive space that the institution thereby contributed to creating (Noël & Pinto 2022).
19Studies have shown that at least initially, audiovisual professionals were slow to take an interest in digital technologies (Rallet & Rochelandet 2006). In 2010, in our earliest interviews, we focused on the hypothesis that new media production was essentially a generational issue, leading young newcomers, who were near in age to “digital natives” and already accustomed to new technologies, to turn towards as-yet under-utilized formats. However, a diversity of profiles quickly became clear, and seemed to match the diversity of productions, including within the relatively coherent sector on which the study focused—that of projects identified by the CNC. Ten years later, what we observed was instead a kind of stability, even if the format of projects had evolved, a trend that continues today with the development of virtual reality. This stability retroactively demonstrates how the sector gradually became structured—by giving precedence to firstcomers.
- 13 Of the twenty companies we interviewed between 2010 and 2012, five fit the profile of Web pioneers, (...)
20The interviews conducted between 2010 and 2012 revealed three major profile types of producers connected to new media: Web pioneers outside of the audiovisual sector; young newcomers; and seasoned professionals, whose companies took a position in these new projects, but who chose to outsource management of them.13
21Although there was some generational overlap, at least among the first two groups, where the individuals we spoke to were usually about 30 years old, their career trajectories included very different organizational contexts, ranging from the creation of ad hoc structures to new media projects within Web agencies or audiovisual production companies. Thus, the typology combines the individual characteristics of these professionals with the type of structure within which they operate.
22The first group, whom we might refer to as “Internet pioneers,” included producers (typically men) whose production activities were strictly limited to new media content. These were Internet experts or the heads of web design agencies, and many of them spearheaded the first productions qualified as new media—in particular, web documentaries. Examples of this group are Alexandre Brachet, who founded Upian, and Arnaud Dressen, the director of Honky Tonk. Their expertise in web design, and more broadly their comfort in using new media technologies, gave them a head start, and their projects were among the very first to be selected by the CNC when it established its new media funding line. Their productions (Gaza/Sderot, Prison Valley, Voyage au bout du charbon) are often cited by other actors in the sector as examples of projects where the web interface is perfectly adapted to narrative content. Their project budgets varied (barely 20,000 euros for Voyage au bout du charbon, which received funding from the CNC and lemonde.fr, versus 250-300,000 euros for Upian’s productions, produced in partnership with Arte), but at bottom they all highlighted a technical expertise that also led to the development of tools to be used by journalists and photographers.
Putting Web expertise toward new media projects
After completing studies in literature in the mid-1990s, Paul, who had always been fascinated by the Internet, worked for a brief time at a multimedia content agency. He left after a year to start his own web design company. The business grew until he had about fifteen permanent employees working on two types of projects: business communication and interface design on the one hand, and web documentaries on the other.
Paul happily emphasized the “bridges” between these two poles: his move to new media production initially came out of adapting skills developed within the business world. Thus, some technical modules created for “corporate” projects were repurposed for web documentaries. Inversely, a photographer involved in one of the web documentaries the company co-produced with Arte was also involved in a more “corporate” project, where he contributed legitimacy in terms of creative work. The company’s web documentary work was part of what it highlighted to showcase itself: these are the projects that appear first on its website. This balance has allowed Paul to fully self-finance certain web documentaries, asserting the editorial freedom that the Internet allows him.
23A second group was made up of the founders of very recently created small production companies. These “young newcomers,” who lacked previous experience in content production, saw new media as a way of accessing the competitive world of production. With various educational backgrounds (business, master’s in media or audiovisual production, film school), these individuals all put new media at the centre of their commercial activities while planning in the medium-term to move into more traditional formats (documentaries, feature-length fiction). For these founders, new media was used to “make a name” for themselves, in a “less crowded” sector than that of short films, the traditional entry point for careers in film and audiovisual (Bregman 1997; Cardon, Pilmis & de Verdalle 2013). A young producer interviewed in 2011, just a year after he had founded his company, put it this way:
These days, to have legitimacy in the short film space, you have to have a crazy impressive resumé. In new media, you just show up with an idea and you’re instantly credible and you’re an expert without much, just because you’re young and interested.
The projects they developed included web documentaries, but also leaned towards fiction, web series, or short formats intended for smartphones.
Using new media as a springboard into production
Clara, who graduated from business school in the 2000s, gradually entered the audiovisual world through internships and short trainings. She explained that she was attracted to new technologies, which were seen as relatively unstandardized, matching her desire for non-routine work. She first joined a Web company, which she left in 2007, when its restructuring coincided with a journalist friend’s offer to start a business built around narrative journalism. Clara saw this as a way to reconcile two aspirations: on the one hand, her interest in images, and on the other, her desire to break free from traditional forms of production organization based on hierarchical employee relations. She felt that her practical knowledge of new media allowed her to distinguish herself from other producers setting out in this niche. However, the projects she focused on did not always showcase a desire to make use of the formal innovations digital tools allowed. By her own account, some of the web documentaries she produced had very traditional forms (linear plots, little or no interactivity). Only their distribution modalities distinguished them from the traditional audiovisual world. Thus, to her, focusing on new media seemed an alternative path to films that “could very well have been shown on television.”
24In the early 2010s, the new media space was also occupied by small group of well-established production companies with hundreds of movies in their catalogues (Capa, Les films d’Ici, and Agat for documentaries; Mascaret for fiction). Having observed that, at least in the case of documentary television productions, their clients often requested Web “accompaniment” services, they were motivated to stake positions in these new formats and take advantage of the opportunities offered by CNC financing. Although these projects made up only a small portion of their overall business, they represented a way of “getting a foot in the door” of a market that these companies felt was becoming necessary to the development of their future activities.
- 14 This can also be observed in the case of webmasters—a group of “responsive” salaried employees who (...)
25Various strategies were possible. For example, companies could choose to create a “new media” division internally and to recruit employees focused on these activities. For some individuals in these positions, arriving at an already-established production company allowed them to reorient a career begun elsewhere.14 For others who were more directly focused on production, these were career-starting positions that preceded moving on to a more traditional position, whether within the same organization or a different (including ones they might start themselves). The second strategy used, somewhat less intentionally, consisted in outsourcing new media production to a firm in one of the other groups discussed—either one of the “Web pioneers” or “newcomers.”
Not satisfied with promoting the projects of others
After graduating from Sciences Po Paris in the early 1990s, Caroline began her first professional life with a cable television company, where she oversaw contracts before moving into marketing and distribution. Restructurings and planned layoffs led her to start her own company in the early 2000s, dedicated to developing content for mobile phone operators. The experience was not entirely successful, and so in 2006 she took a salaried position with an Internet startup. At a festival showcasing projects developed for mobile phone and Internet viewing, she met the founder of a large independent documentary production company, who offered her a job as the creator of a new media division at the company. After a few initial forays, she began to be directly involved in projects and to more actively take on production work, which she had not initially: “I don’t want to be seen as a ‘Web girl’. I’m here to dream up transmedia projects and work with others.”
At the time of our interview, she was still working on enriching television projects by creating accompanying Web content, an activity she considered to be “not super creative.” She also conceived transmedia concepts: for example, a history show that drew on the contributions of Internet users. And last, she developed what she described as projects that were “more innovative” in terms of narration. Thus, one of the television shows she oversaw included elements from a video game, allowing web visitors to “interact directly” with the series’ characters.
26The typology of the three groups described above overlaps with observations that have been made of the world of online media, in the sense that, in both, we have witnessed the arrival of new actors alongside traditional players in the sector (Benghozi et al. 2015; Christin 2018). With the category of Web pioneers, we also observe the influence of actors external to the audiovisual world, who contribute their expertise with technological tools and whose profiles are similar to those whom Jean-Pierre Benghozi et al. (2019) have described in cinema as “new brokers,” who “organize the dialogue between technical expertise and the creative dimension,” and thereby “create a place for themselves in the ecosystem.” In 2010, it was still an open question whether this place would continue to exist.
27During my second round of interviews, little appeared to have changed in the profiles of producers and their companies. Agencies that came out of the Internet world continued to highlight their specific expertise in creating websites and interfaces. The content they developed gradually moved away from web documentaries, a genre that began to decline in the mid-2010s (Bourgatte 2024), and towards other types of productions (sometimes for museums or other exhibits, sometimes in conjunction with the online media or television channels, who had been their earliest partners). Some of their productions made use of know-how that came from video games industry. Overall, their catalogues demonstrate a wide range of formats and include content based on partnerships with various actors according to their expertise. And as for those businesses that were already active in the audiovisual sector and who diversified to marginally include new media, they maintained this mixed profile, keeping one foot (and one support account) in the audiovisual world while also developing digital projects.
- 15 In the early 2010s, the telephone company Orange established a “transmedia lab.” At the European le (...)
- 16 I found only one example of someone pivoting toward more traditional production forms: a young prod (...)
28More surprising was the fact that the newest, and thus, most fragile, companies from 2010 remained in business—newcomers who had bet on new media to make a name for themselves and establish a place in the professional production space. In fact, the majority of these businesses stayed afloat, benefitting from funding structures for transmedia initiatives.15 They often reinforced their rootedness in the digital creation production space, which did not always correspond to the aspirations they expressed in 2010, when their founders were more focused on accessing the worlds of film or audiovisual media.16
29Such relative stability suggests that those who first seized the opportunities created by new media capitalized on their early entry into this space of production. Recognition by the CNC and by the most active players in the domain thus turned into a lasting resource, mirrored by a kind of generational collusion that made networking among these early actors easier: they frequently saw each other at the same events and professional conferences (the SPI, PXN), stayed up-to-date with each other’s projects, and found out about the trustworthiness of potential partners, thus managing to reduce the uncertainty surrounding their work (Ferrary 2003). Thanks to their early involvement, these “first movers” (DiMaggio & Powell 1983) were also able to shape developments in the sector. Thus, Alexandre Brachet, the founder of Upian, was quickly asked to serve on the CNC’s “New Media” committee. Over the course of the 2010s, several other newcomers sat on this committee, influencing the selection of projects and thus defining the boundaries of new media.
30At the same time, production companies in the new media sector—particularly the youngest of them—also underwent transformations. In examining the projects completed during this decade, we can discern the reshaping of a production space as it adopted new criteria and new points of reference. Staying in business thus meant successfully driving, or at least keeping up with, changes in format and content (Benghozi et al. 2019). In an ecosystem marked by changing formats, this ability to rebound and to quickly grab hold of new trends seems to have been decisive. This was evident in our second interview with a producer who had resolutely positioned his business in the web documentary niche in the mid-2000s:
There were two types of programmes that emerged after web documentaries. There was, of course, virtual reality and then there was digital storytelling, which made use of social networks. So we, we usually followed those developments, well—we followed them and also instigated them a bit, that is, there was a fully collaborative thought process between specialized producers in the sector and distributors. (Producer, former newcomer, July 2018 [2nd interview])
- 17 They were also higher than the average budget for fiction shorts, which are typically around 100,00 (...)
31These reorientations allowed production companies to capture the attention and financing of new partners—first and foremost, manufacturers of virtual reality headsets, who, beginning in the late 2010s, invested in several flagship projects whose budgets (from 400-500,000 euros to 1-2 million euros) were higher than those of web documentaries during the period before.17
32The major change had to do with digital storytelling—series that use social networks to explore other forms of interactivity:
And so, we learned lessons from the experience of web docs, where the interactive parts didn’t always work very well. […] We realized that we needed to be thinking more and more in terms of apps, and really making use of social networks. For example, on [this project], every day there is a new episode that’s like an “album story.” It’s really told in the format of a comic strip with sound, using geolocation and all the functions of Instagram. […] Ultimately, all we did was to rework the very old idea of the serial, but we really also entered into the temporality of the audience; they […] respond, they comment. (Producer, former newcomer, June 2019 [2nd interview])
33Finally, some producers on the scene in the early 2010s continued working on web series, which were based on more linear structures but whose formats were also reworked in relation to traditional audiovisual productions that were constrained by broadcast screens.
- 18 Translator’s note: RTBF is the Belgium national public broadcaster.
In the end, we abandoned transmedia, […] but we realized we could do things for new media. That is, for mobile devices with platforms like Blackpills, whose future is now in question, but at the time it was an open door to the digital world, with France Télévisions Nouvelles écritures [the new media division of France Télévisions], with Arte Creative, interactive RTBF [the new media division of the RTBF18]. New media made it possible for us to think a bit more about format; before, you had either 26 or 52 [minutes]. But with digital, you started to have 5 minutes, 10, 15, and we heard distributers say that the 6x15 minute format interested them. (Producer, former newcomer, June 2018 [2nd interview])
- 19 Today, on-demand television consumption, which includes recapping services as well as streaming pla (...)
34Over the course of the decade, the CNC’s criteria continued to shape the boundaries of digital creation by incorporating some new productions (virtual reality projects) while excluding others, which were judged insufficiently innovative (web series) and were thus referred out to more traditional audiovisual organizations (ex-Cosip; Compte de soutien aux industries de programme / Fund for Programming Industries). In 2016, the institution also abandoned its distinction between multi-platform projects and projects intended for the Internet and mobile screens. In so doing, the CNC was taking into account shifts in the audiovisual landscape, with the rising power of streaming and subscription-based on-demand video platforms, which made assessing content on the basis of modes of distribution a moot point.19 However, the institutional discourse of the time also associated the professionalization of an entire segment of the new media sector with the establishment of “viable” economic models, which in fact fit the traditional patterns of the audiovisual world:
To an extent, digital series followed their own path in those years, they became professionalized, and financial partners came on the scene, whether those were sites run directly by TV channels or “pure players” like Spicee for example. We saw more and more partners present on the Internet with investment capabilities that allowed them to invest in original content made for the Web, but using formats that in the end were fairly traditional; that is, it quickly became clear that these projects, from an artistic point of view, should be assessed on the same basis as broadcast projects. […] It also became apparent that there weren’t big differences in terms of writing, production, or even, in the end, distribution, in a landscape where today television is mostly consumed on demand. So following that logic, and the logic that web series represented a new audiovisual market, [in 2018] we incorporated all these traditional linear audiovisual formats into our traditional, long-standing audiovisual support programmes. (Member of the CNC’s digital creation department, June 2018)
35What remained, and what continued to benefit from aid on the grounds that they were truly “innovative,” were those works that could not yet be standardized and/or emerged out of a logic of exploration (the expression “editorial and economic laboratory” often arose in CNC communications). In another realm, Violaine Roussel (2023) has demonstrated a similar dynamic in “digital agenting”: digital-focused departments in the major Hollywood agencies had to constantly reinvent themselves, since as soon as things stabilized, they were transferred to pre-existing departments.
- 20 In 2023 this culminated in a new fund that replaced earlier ones and was named “Immersive Creation (...)
36Thus, in 2018, most of the actors benefitting from CNC digital creation support were engaged in projects involving so-called “immersive” storylines—a shift that the institution encouraged by working to rearrange its funding structures, for example, by doing away with its funding cap to better account for projects with higher budgets (in particular, virtual reality films).20 Some young producers who in 2010–2012 were salaried employees at established audiovisual businesses tasked with launching new media projects also took advantage of this shift to launch their own companies, capitalizing on their network and expertise.
- 21 PXN website (viewed February 2024).
- 22 This union is organized into five divisions: “Mixed, augmented, and virtual extended realities,” “S (...)
37This group of companies with high institutional visibility constituted the core of actors behind the creation of the PXN in 2016, a professional association for “independent new media producers working in digital development in the French cultural and creative industries.”21 Among the seventy production companies who were members of it in 2022, the average date of creation was 2010 and the median date was 2012, which would seem to support the hypothesis that the actors involved in it belonged to the successful, visible core network of companies involved in digital creation in the early 2010s.22
38Producing new media content and later working on digital creation projects meant establishing forms of collaboration and models of financing that were still in their infancy in 2010. To what extent has the evolution of the sector allowed for new work conventions, and to what extent has the financing of projects moved away from traditional circuits of audiovisual production?
39Projects involving new media are unique in that, from the development stage onward, they involve both “know-how in terms of narration” and “the knowledge necessary to invent ergonomic interfaces” (Schobert 2017). Furthermore, the development of technologies (for example, with the rise of virtual reality) makes any work routines that might be established unstable. Since the works of Paul Hirsch (1972) and Howard Becker (1982), it has been traditional within sociology to analyze how prototypical forms of cultural or artistic works make use of certain forms of recurrence within collaborations and modes of working; yet, the projects in question here require the definition of new roles and new conventions. How do these contribute to redefining the professional terrains of the actors involved and to creating new ones?
40Our interviews from the early 2010s highlighted interviewees’ uncertainty about how to proceed: they frequently expressed the feeling of learning as they went, and their stories were punctuated by descriptions of frequent failures. Thus, one producer we met in 2012, whose company had been founded in 2006, named five projects for which she had received development funding but which ultimately never saw the light of day. She emphasized the difficulties she encountered in “concretizing” these projects, and found that the variety of profiles and skills they required represented a real “obstacle,” since one must develop complex writing devices suited to kaleidoscopic narrations, imagine ways of engaging the audience actively, and think very early on about distribution strategies for coordinating the publication of a project’s various elements across multiple platforms.
41As David Stark (2009) has shown for new website creation companies in the early 2000s, the lack of real stability in the definition of new media projects along with the difficulty actors sometimes face in locating and positioning themselves in an ever-evolving space of production has repercussions for the work of coordinating projects and transferring expertise from one project to another. Indeed, today there are still only a few proven models, and the ways of creating them are not always the same. Sabine Chalvon Demersay and Dominique Pasquier (1993) observed a comparable phenomenon in their study of a short-lived French soap opera in the late 1980s. Lacking any points of reference or prior French experience, the team tasked with developing this production for the channel TF1 was a mix of supposedly complementary profiles (production newcomers, professionals with experience abroad, others from “similar” sectors, etc.). However, “such diversity made reaching a consensus difficult. […] Which of these professionals, each with different skillsets, held the keys to success?” (ibid.: 104).
42In new media productions, such difficulties and disagreements are often expressed very directly, as early as the development and writing phases, and bring in relationships of authority and leadership (Schmitt & Salles 2017). This occurs, for example, when the producer and director of a work do not agree on the possibilities offered by new media:
One of the mistakes we made [on that project] was we produced too much. Since we had a site where we could put content up, we could release as much as we wanted. I fought for a long time, against the opinion of the director, to say: “no, we’re putting up three minutes and that’s enough, we don’t need to add ten bonuses.” […] Since it’s on the Internet, people think, well, it’s possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. (Producer, newcomer, May 2011 [1st interview])
43The qualities particular to new media projects thus alter the modes of coordination that would usually frame a creative process. The integration of new media means bringing together unlikely partners: Web agencies, graphic designers, multimedia creators, and experience designers, who shape a project’s visual environment and develop its interactive dimension. Even more so than in the case of television series, where the collective dimension of writing has been analyzed (Mille 2016, 2024; Sessego 2020), the question of how to co-ordinate these various professionals is a pressing one. The earliest projects appear to have depended on the relative polyvalence of their participants, accompanied by the fairly rapid appearance of specific trainings for multimedia writing in the early 2010s. In a study of web documentaries, Laurie Schmitt and Chloé Salles (2017) thus show that their study participants—the journalists or directors behind projects—were often “all-rounders,” “jack of all trades.” Gradually, however, another path took shape, as the role of “project architect” emerged: someone charged with organizing work within teams combining highly varied skillsets and professional cultures. This role tends to be played by a work’s producer, who orchestrates a project’s development and creation, and oversees it all the way through distribution. One of the producers interviewed in 2014 as part of the Fablabchannel report thus emphasized that “each project needs a leader, […] someone to oversee the whole thing.” The project manager at the CNC whom we spoke to in 2011 also emphasized this need for co-ordination which, according to her, benefits producers in comparison to traditional projects:
These projects reinforce the role of the producers, including in their power relations with the distributor, since very often the role of the producer does not stop when a project goes online, unlike in television, where once a product has been delivered, once the broadcast master is done, there’s nothing more for the producer to do. (CNC project manager, May 2011)
- 23 Samuel Zarka (2022) has shown that the showrunner role also became necessary for fiction projects p (...)
44Over time, new forms of specialization have appeared, giving rise to standalone careers. The move to virtual reality has bolstered these developments and made it necessary—very early on in a project—to incorporate the technical characteristics of the medium. In particular, the spatialization and orientation of the user’s point of view must be taken into account in screenwriting (Morriet 2019). It is also necessary to adapt—sometimes as writing is taking place—to the most recent technological innovations, which can dramatically alter the course of a project’s development. The interviews we conducted beginning in 2018 show that producers sometimes delegate this role, which is comparable to that of showrunners, who are responsible for continuity of production in television series.23 Thus, one of my interviewees, who in 2011 had been the head of a production company focused on transmedia and who I re-interviewed in 2011, had shut down her company but was working as a “freelance story architect,” overseeing the editorial coordination and artistic direction of various projects.
45The actors involved in the production of new media content around 2010 were also facing the slow structuration of a specific market for financing the projects they were developing, which, in their words, didn’t “fit in the boxes” of traditional funding for audiovisual and cinematic works, even as they were also benefitting from an institutional label that gave them access to certain resources. For the three groups of actors defined here, the stakes were not always quite the same.
46For Web pioneers as well as for established companies in the audiovisual sector, new media projects were incorporated into a strategy of limited diversification of content and moderate risk-taking. Such projects were ways for these companies to distinguish themselves from competitors, and served to bolster their positions in the sectors for which they were known. Thus, companies like Upian funded losses on projects that allowed them to highlight their technical expertise for other projects. The established production companies accepted investments that they hoped would one day turn into profits, as part of a strategy of research and innovation.
- 24 These projects remained marginal compared to the stations’ overall activities. In 2015 for example, (...)
47The newcomers, who were financially the most fragile, succeeded thanks to the financial support of the CNC, France Télévisions, and Arte, as well as by gathering all possible resources to meet their projects’ budget requirements, bringing together business foundations, non-profits, and NGOs, which contributed either by funding small amounts (5,000–15,000 euros) or who by offering services such as hosting works on their online spaces or by making their media resources available. Cell phone companies such as Orange (which emerged out of the gradual transformations and privatization of the state company France Télécom) contributed financially to certain projects. However, it was TV channels—at least those who became involved in this type of project24—who remained the go-to for these young new media producers:
If my company hadn’t worked with TV channels the entire time, we would be dead […] Other programmes were what financed the risk [of digital projects]. (Producer, former newcomer, July 2018 [2nd interview])
- 25 By comparison, an episode of the soap opera Plus belle la vie cost on average 100,000 euros (Mille (...)
- 26 Dailymotion contributed 10,000 euros; other partners included Allociné, the newspapers 20minutes an (...)
48Depending on the nature, complexity, and distribution methods of projects, amount of funding raised was extremely variable, ranging from tens of thousands of euros for “web native” projects up to hundreds of thousands for projects combining traditional formats (documentary or fiction films) with multi-screen adaptations. Thus, the web series Addicts, distributed by Arte.tv in late 2010 (comprised of sixteen episodes accompanied by “digital traces” posted on the websites of various media companies, “backstage” videos, a main site updated daily, and social media posts) required a total budget of just over a million euros.25 Arte contributed about a third of this, with the rest coming from production companies (Mascaret Films and Pictor Média), the CNC (250,000 euros), and the Aquitaine region (where the episodes were filmed), in addition to various partners who contributed small sums.26
49Although beginning in the early 2000s the CNC sought to make new media production an independent business form, results were mixed. True, the funding it granted allowed for experimentation, and above all made it easier to get other funding partners on board, serving as leverage for certain projects. Such funding financed the writing and shooting of pilots that could persuade potential distributors, helped make projects more concrete by allowing for visuals or mock-ups, and served as indicators of quality. But ultimately transmedia projects remained tethered to fairly traditional financing circuits, leading observers to qualify the transformative power of these productions vis-à-vis existing models (Pouilloux 2017; Schobert 2017).
50Beginning in 2016–2017, the development of virtual reality opened the way to new funding, and the CNC’s digital creation department encouraged producers to deploy new strategies by distancing themselves from television distributors:
In my opinion, in the space of virtual reality, or interactive creation more broadly, it’s really necessary to break free from the logic of channels, the audiovisual logic […] It’s also necessary, from my point of view, to work at an international level, for markets that are today global; it doesn’t make sense to produce an interactive work just for the French market. […] Because the role of the CNC is to […] allow projects that are truly unique, truly original, to come into existence. […] The trend is that more and more of our assistance is for development, in fact. […] I think that actually producers will have less and less need of us during the production phase. In contrast, in development, yes, it makes sense for us to really be there at the very beginning, to have things that really stand out from the crowd. (Member of the CNC’s digital creation department, June 2018)
- 27 These prototypes can be extremely expensive (sometimes up to a million euros for fifteen minutes of (...)
- 28 “3 questions for Atlas V,” CNC website, 10 July 2018.
- 29 The attempt at opening an MK2 space [one of the major French movie theatre chains] dedicated to vir (...)
51The CNC thus proclaims a strategy seeking to gradually target its funding to earlier on in the process of creation, betting on the fact that other actors, following the logic of the market, will take over from there. One of the founders of the company Atlas V, which was created in 2017 and focuses on immersive experiences, shared this approach, which he described as part of a “European” and even more specifically “French” view “of how a digital market should be constructed”: “CNC aids make it possible in particular to build prototypes27 under good conditions, so that international co-production plans can be developed”28 (his company does over half its business in the United States). However, nationally, as the CNC’s assessments show, the French virtual reality market remains dominated by video games and theme parks, and fiction projects are still in the experimental phase, in terms of both their development and their funding circuits. Despite the inclusion of virtual reality productions in the Cannes film market in 2019 (Chatelet 2020; Laurichesse 2020) and the creation of a “VR” award at prestigious festivals like Venice and Cannes, the distribution spaces for these projects remain fairly limited.29
52New media production provides an interesting vantage point from which to trace, beginning in the 2000s, the emergence and gradual structuration of a production space where professionals tried out various things, took initiatives, and made more or less risky bets, all while trying to secure their own positions and to influence the normative frames for their work. This space changed shape, and gained consistency. It received institutional funding (from the CNC) and took advantage of funding structures (for production assistance) which, through the labelling process, gradually “oriented practices” and “rewarded risk-taking” (Noël & Pinto 2022).
53The space also underwent rapid changes, in a domain where technological developments unfold quickly. In a relatively short span of time (some ten years), contents evolved (from the first web documentaries to the most recent virtual reality projects) and seemed to grow further and further away from the old audiovisual world, that of television channels and broadcast programme distribution. However, although actors in the new media space frequently highlighted the disruptive nature of their projects’ contents and formats, elements of continuity are visible. These elements take two main forms. First, with respect to the profiles of the production professionals, we observe the co-existence of newcomers with seasoned producers, who keep one foot in the more traditional space of audiovisual production. The duration of our study also made it possible to demonstrate a shorter-term continuity, revealing how firstcomers benefitted from their early entry into a space still in the process of structuring.
54On the other hand, the actors in question only partially separated themselves from the audiovisual sector, although the domain of virtual reality may have led to increased separation. Digital creation does indeed offer new opportunities and new beginnings, but it remains partially dependent on earlier states of the content market. Economic models remain hybrid for the most part, either because production companies invest in the video game sector in parallel, or do business as Web agencies, or offer services providing immersive experiences to other actors (museums, for example), or, finally, because they continue to produce more traditional formats, in partnership with television channels. Thus, the possibility of independence through access to a specific market remains uncertain. In her analysis of digital transformations in Hollywood, Violaine Roussel (2023) also notes the weight of “established logics,” in spite of the discourse of disruption. While transformations in the audiovisual landscape have contributed to moving the frontlines of innovation and changing the space of possibilities, forms of continuity can be seen and are found in the representations and anticipations of actors in this sector, suggesting this line of inquiry should be further pursued, in order to better understand these dynamics and the forms of adaptation to which they give rise.